In stores, vending machines, and the like that sell merchandise, a work for collecting merchandise information of merchandise being sold is performed in order to grasp a sales situation as marketing. There are numerous stores and vending machines, and therefore, there has been a problem that a work cost and a work time are needed when the merchandise information is manually collected. Therefore, a method for automatically collecting such merchandise information using an image captured by a camera has been desired.
PTL1 describes an apparatus that collates captured image data with image data of a plurality of articles previously stored.